Education After Covid-19

Selaine Saxby Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

Having met secondary heads in northern Devon last week, they clearly articulated how they see this as a watershed moment for education, and a chance we should not miss to revisit how the education system works and the outcomes it delivers for our young people. I was a newly qualified maths teacher just before my election in 2019, so I speak with some insight into what is going on in our schools in northern Devon. I take the opportunity to thank everyone who works in them, and for everything they have done throughout the pandemic. I also thank all the parents who have been home-educating, which will have ensured this generation of schoolchildren have learnt many more life skills than perhaps previous generations, given the very difficult year we have all endured.

Northern Devon consists of my constituency of North Devon and neighbouring Torridge. As the head of the school where I taught described it, it is located at the top of the country’s longest cul-de-sac. The area is remote, rural and coastal and presents unique challenges that, to date, have not been reflected in education policies, nationally or regionally.

For me, levelling up starts with education and skills. One measure that highlights that there is work to be done in northern Devon is the social mobility index. Of the 324 local authority district areas, in the south of Devon, South Hams is ranked at 49 and Exeter 81, yet my constituency ranks 238th and Torridge is at 283. The pandemic has shown how our schools deliver much more than just the three Rs to our young people and their families. Our headteachers talk of a holistic egality strategy for North Devon and Torridge that comprises education, special educational needs, social services and child support. The headteachers are uniquely placed to feed into that long-overdue strategy, and also to manage the resources that they need to deliver it within northern Devon, more specifically than just Devon.

As we look into education and building back better, I very much hope that the next generation will be inspired by the work delivered by our world-leading scientists in developing treatments and vaccines for covid-19. I know that, locally to me in North Devon, the children at the primary school in Tawstock are keen to become broadband engineers after seeing at first hand how Openreach connects their school and having had the chance to splice fibres and better understand how fibre broadband works and is delivered.

For our levelling-up agenda to be realised we need to better integrate schools with local employers, and embed at a far younger age what it means to be an engineer or a scientist. This might at last be my opportunity to inspire more youngsters to pass their maths GCSE, as a ticket to achieving an exciting career near home in lovely North Devon.

We also need to devise policies that are effective in remote rural locations and use the expertise of the teaching profession in those locations to really build back better. I very much look forward to working with the Minister and the team of fantastic heads in northern Devon to begin to move the agenda forward.